Last Call For Putin's Russian Reversal

I'll take "Vlad The Dudesplainer" in the NY Times for $1600, Alex.

RECENT events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.

Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again. 

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades. 

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization. 

This coming from the guy who, you know, actually murders opposing journalists and politicians, kills his own people in Chechnya, and criminalizes LGBTQ advocacy.  It continues on like this at some length, but the bottom line is that same anti-Obama coalition of libertarian dudebros and Worse Than Bush liberals have a new hero in a mass-murdering quasi fascist jackass, who basically really is actually guilty of all the things they accuse Obama of on a regular basis.  Still, you have to "admire" the guy if you hate yourself some Obama...

2) Putin's awful, the op-ed is trolling, but also a little taste of what it feels like to other country's citizens to be lectured at by US
— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 12, 2013

He still didn't call the President "Barry" enough times, so it means Dowd is still a better troll. 

What's A Quarter Of A Billion Among Friends?

Meanwhile, the Koch Brothers secretly raised and spent $250 million to influence the 2012 elections, and we're only now just finding this out a year or so after the fact.

The group, Freedom Partners, and its president, Marc Short, serve as an outlet for the ideas and funds of the mysterious Koch brothers, cutting checks as large as $63 million to groups promoting conservative causes, according to an IRS document to be filed shortly.

The 38-page IRS filing amounts to the Rosetta Stone of the vast web of conservative groups — some prominent, some obscure — that spend time, money and resources to influence public debate, especially over Obamacare.

The group has about 200 donors, each paying at least $100,000 in annual dues. It raised $256 million in the year after its creation in November 2011, the document shows. And it made grants of $236 million — meaning a totally unknown group was the largest sugar daddy for conservative groups in the last election, second in total spending only to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, which together spent about $300 million.

Short, a soft-spoken but ferociously conservative 43-year-old operative, provided us a draft of a forthcoming IRS filing that will soon be available to the public. Short, like most in the Koch empire, feels wealthy conservative activists such as Charles and David Koch get a bum rap from the media. So, Short wants to ease his groups and their cause out of the shadows.

“There’s a mystery around us that makes an interesting story,” Short said in an interview in his conference room. “There’s also a vilification that happens that gets exaggerated when your opposition thinks you’re secretive. Our members are proud to be part of [the organization].”

And thanks to Citizens United, they can buy as much of our political process as they want.  When $250 million isn't enough, they'll simply spend more in 2014 and 2016 until the entire country is under Tea Party control.  If you're wondering why nearly half of Americans think Obamacare has been repealed or overturned already and is no longer law, well, you might want to start with the kind of media coverage that $250 million can buy.

Woot Woot! It's The Sound Of The GOP Food Police!

The GOP loves to trash Michelle Obama over her advocacy of healthy food choices and exercise to get kids active and practicing good habits.  Republicans call it "food fascism" of course, that government has no business telling people what to eat. 

Unless you're on SNAP benefits, in which case your forfeit your rights as an American citizen and Republicans are happy to pass laws telling you what you should eat.

Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) on Tuesday proposed legislation that would require people using federal food stamps to buy only healthy food.

The Healthy Food Choices Act, H.R. 3073, reflects a long-standing criticism that the government's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) allows people to buy billions of dollars worth of junk food.

A 2012 study found that food stamps enable about $2 billion worth of junk food purchases each year, and that more than half of all SNAP benefits are used to buy sugary drinks.

Efforts to curb these purchases have been opposed by anti-hunger groups. But Roe said some states are already exploring ways to curb junk food purchases through the SNAP program, and argued that the federal government needs to take steps as well.

"Already, states like Wisconsin and South Carolina have shown interest in improving the healthfulness of choices in their SNAP programs," he said. "By giving SNAP recipients more nutritious choices, we can take a meaningful step towards ending hunger in America."

So no, Republicans have zero problem with actual government control of what you can buy to eat if they can use that power on those people.

Can't wait to see what big agra and the fast food giants do to this bill, too.  You know they're not going to sit buy and let Congress take $2 billion in yearly sales away from them.

StupidiNews!

• Heavy flooding in Colorado's Boulder County has claimed at least one life as flash floods wiped out several homes and structures near Jamestown.
• Some House Republicans are pushing for a UN Security Council resolution that brings up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on an international war crimes tribunal.
• Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are continuing talks in Geneva over international control of Syria's chemical weapons.
• BlackBerry is pushing Ottawa over rules governing foreign acquisition of the Canadian tech firm.
• Cybersecurity experts are worried that Java will never fix major exploits in version 6 of the software, still widely used and unsupported by Oracle.

Last Call For The Colorado Shuffle

Tom Jensen over at Public Policy Polling is taking massive heat for this decision, and rightfully so:

We did a poll last weekend in Colorado Senate District 3 and found that voters intended to recall Angela Giron by a 12 point margin, 54/42. In a district that Barack Obama won by almost 20 points I figured there was no way that could be right and made a rare decision not to release the poll. It turns out we should have had more faith in our numbers because she was indeed recalled by 12 points.

Granted, the NRA had a best case scenario in the recall vote, but it's a vote they won by double digits.  Both Giron and Colorado State Senate President John Morse were sent packing.

The National Rifle Association, which donated about $360,000 to support the recalls, hailed Morse's loss, telling The Denver Post it "is proud to have stood with the men and women in Colorado who sent a clear message that their Second Amendment rights are not for sale."

But it wasn't just the NRA that warned Democrats about messing with gun rights.

Sen. Lois Tochtrop, an Adams County Democrat and longtime Second Amendment activist, opposed five of the seven gun bills initially introduced in the session, including a lightning-rod proposal by Morse.

That proposal would have assigned liability for assault-style weapon damages to manufacturers and sellers, but Morse killed it at the 11th-hour because he didn't have the votes to pass it through the Democratic-controlled Senate.

"I feel like all these gun bills have done — to quote the last words in the movie 'Tora! Tora! Tora!' — is to awaken a sleeping giant," Tochtrop said during the debate.  

And that's true.  All across the country, the NRA has crushed gun control laws and limited victories to Pyrrhic ones.  It's one thing to defeat somebody in an election, but to knock them off in a recall over legislation, well, Democrats were told that was un-American in Wisconsin.  Guess it's okay now.

Berger's Game

Well played troll card, NC GOP.  Well played, indeed.

A science fiction author who opposes equal rights for LGBT people and has a history of comparing Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler was appointed to a board of trustees overseeing North Carolina’s public television stations this week.

In a statement on Monday, UNC-TV announced that Republican state Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger had named Orson Scott Card to the UNC-TV Board of Trustees.

“We are pleased to welcome Mr. Card to the UNC-TV Board of Trustees,” Chairman Robb Teer said. “We are grateful for his willingness to serve and look forward to working with him to continue providing the people of our state with enriching, life-changing television in these challenging times.”

Card, the popular sci-fi author whose seminal tale "Ender's Game" is being made into a movie this holiday season also wrote this:

On foreign policy, Obama is already the dumbest president in American history, and there's so much competition for that title. Only the fact that Al Gore, John Kerry, and Joe Biden were never president leaves him in sole possession of the crown.

But that brings me to a little thought experiment that seized my imagination a few weeks ago and won't go away.

Obama is, by character and preference, a dictator. He hates the very idea of compromise; he demonizes his critics and despises even his own toadies in the liberal press. He circumvented Congress as soon as he got into office by appointing "czars" who didn't need Senate approval. His own party hasn't passed a budget ever in the Senate.

In other words, Obama already acts as if the Constitution were just for show. Like Augustus, he pretends to govern within its framework, but in fact he treats it with contempt.

How far might he take his dictatorial disposition? Is there any plausible way for him to remain as president for life, like the dictators he so admires and envies in Russia, China, and the Muslim world?

Of course the NC GOP was going to put him in charge of the state's public TV.  The guy's grasp of politics is only slightly less realistic than his dystopian sci-fi.

So if you're a North Carolina taxpayer and public TV watcher, do you boycott PBS over Card, or continue to donate knowing that public TV needs the money?

Science Textbooks, Now With Less Of That Science Stuff

The Lone Star State needs not your "science" in science textbooks for school, nay, for it is mighty Texas!  Look upon its works and despair!  Especially, if, you know, you like science.  Check it out as the fundies on Texas's state school board of education wants the following "disclaimers" on all that pesky science crap:

– called for the inclusion of “‘creation science’ based on Biblical principles”

– asserted that “no transitional fossils have been discovered”

– insisted that there is no evidence for a human influence on the carbon cycle

– claimed that there is no evidence about the effect of climate change on species diversity

– promoted a book touting “intelligent design” creationism as a reliable source of scientific information

– denied that recombination and genetic drift are evolutionary mechanisms

– mischaracterized experiments on the peppered moth as “discredited” and as “fabrication[s]“

Depressing.  But not as depressing as this:

In terms of textbook standards, as Texas goes, so goes the nation. The state “is one of the nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks” and publishers are often “reluctant to produce different versions of the same material,” and therefore create books in line with Texas’ standards.

You know, Texas education standards like this:

For years, members of the Texas Board of Education have tried, with various degrees of success, to overhaul the state’s textbook standards, “pushing for inclusion of more…Confederate glorification,” re-naming the Atlantic slave trade the “Atlantic Triangle Trade,” and prioritizing “a suggestion that the anti-communist witch-hunt by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s may have been justified.” A recent review of the books has also found a consistent pattern of negative portrayals of Muslims and Islam.

The victors get to write the history books, as they say.  Literally.

StupidiNews!

• NYC's Tuesday mayoral primary contest is down to Joe Lhota on the GOP side and Bill de Blasio and former city comptroller Bill Thompson on the Dems side, with Weiner and Quinn gone.
• Tropical Storm Gabrielle is taking aim at Bermuda, with her brother Humberto following through the late Atlantic hurricane season.
• Washington State officials are asking Congress to change federal rules to allow the state's pot shops to take credit cards, as cash-only stores would be tempting robbery targets.
• The latest shakeup of the 30 companies that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average finds Nike, Goldman Sachs, and Visa are in, HP, Alcoa, and Bank of America are out.
• After a major online backlash from developers and volume customers, Microsoft is reversing its decision not to make Windows 8.1 available early to TechNet subscribers.

Last Call For Lightning Diplomacy

With Syria now agreeing to come clean on chemical weapons and to sign the Chemical Weapons Ban treaty, Ezra Klein predicts a White House win. What a difference a day makes.

Assad is now agreeing to preserve and strengthen that norm. He’s agreeing to sign the treaty banning chemical weapons — a treaty Syria has been one of the lone holdouts against. He’s creating a situation in which it would be almost impossible for him to use chemical weapons in the future, as doing so would break his promises to the global community, invite an immediate American response, and embarrass Russia.

This is, in many ways, a better outcome than the White House could have hoped for. Punishing Syria may or may not have actually reinforced the norm against chemical weapons — particularly if the strikes went bad and the American people punished members of Congress who voted for them. But Syria joining the treaty against chemical weapons definitely, almost definitionally, reinforces the ban.

Now, there are obstacles between here and there. The White House wants to see this ratified in the UN Security Council and subject to tough international monitoring, and Russia says that means forswearing force against Syria. And there’s always the chance that Assad’s spokesman pops up tomorrow with a press release that says, simply, “syke!”

But the White House shouldn’t work too hard to set the bar high here. If Assad is willing to sign the treaty and stop using chemical weapons, they should declare victory. It’s a better outcome than they could have hoped for. And they might get it without firing a single shot.

Almost like President Obama knows what he's doing.  More on the President's speech tomorrow.

[UPDATE, Wed morning]  The President's speech last night was the case we've heard before:  somebody has to handle Syria, and that somebody has to be us.  I remain unconvinced, as does pretty much the rest of the country, but the President is going to follow through on the Russian disposal angle for Asaad, and frankly the old Churchill adage remains apt: "'Jaw, jaw' is better than 'war, war.'"  I trust the President to continue diplomacy and to find a way to make this work.

If it doesn't, well, that's another discussion for another day.

So Three Schmucks Head To Egypt...

...and I wish I had a really great joke to go along with that opening, but sadly that's the headline to this story of GOP dipsticks Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, and Steve King actually going to Egypt.  To have a press conference.  Where they announced their plans to undermine US foreign policy for all the entire world to see last weekend.

Tea party-backed Representatives Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Steve King (R-IA) on Saturday held a press conference in Egypt to thank the country’s military for overthrowing the elected government, and at one point even seemed to suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood had been behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

“Together, we’ve gone through suffering. Together, the United States and Egypt, have dealt with the same enemy,” Bachmann explained. “It’s a common enemy, and it’s an enemy called terrorism.”

“We want to make sure that you have the Apache helicopters, the F-16s, the equipment that you have so bravely used to capture terrorists and to take care of this menace that’s on your border,” she continued. “Many of you have asked, do we understand who the enemy is? We can speak for ourselves. We do.”

“We have seen the threat that the Muslim Brotherhood has posed here for the people in Egypt. We have seen the threat that the Muslim Brotherhood has posed around the world. We stand against this great evil. We are not for them. We remember who caused 9/11 in America. We remember who it was that killed 3,000 brave Americans. We have not forgotten.”

So yes, if you're keeping score, these three clowns 1) went to a foreign capital in order to criticize the President, 2) promised the Egyptian military an increase in military aid after staging a coup, the exact opposite of stated US policy,  and 3) blamed Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood for 9/11.

This is actually breathtakingly awful, it should be illegal, and it should get all three of these jackasses tossed from the House.  But hey, they're Republicans attacking the President, so nobody will care.

George Of The Bungle

Nobody could have predicted that George Zimmerman was going to remain a powder keg after his acquittal.  Nope.  Not a single person saw this coming.

Lake Mary police say they were called around 2:30 p.m. to the Sprucewood Road home of Shellie Zimmerman's parents, David and Machelle Dean.

According to Lake Mary Police Chief Steve Bracknell, Shellie Zimmerman called 911 claiming George Zimmerman had a gun and was making threats.

"He’s in his car and he continually has his hand on his gun and he keeps saying 'step closer' and he’s just threatening all of us," Shellie Zimmerman said in the 911 call, adding that George Zimmerman was "trying to shut the garage door" on her.

"He punched my dad in the nose my dad has a mark on the nose. I saw his glasses were on the floor," Shellie Zimmerman said in the call. He then accosted my father then took my iPad out of my hands. He then smashed it and cut it with a pocketknife, and there is a Lake Mary city worker across the street that I believe saw all of it."

The victims were not speaking to police and waited for their attorney to arrive before leaving just after 4 p.m. George Zimmerman is cooperating and is clam, according to police. Police say George Zimmerman is now accusing Shellie Zimmerman of being the aggressor in the conflict and the investigation is ongoing.

Can't wait for the conspiracy theories on that one.   Zimmerman's wife isn't pressing charges, so, of course George walks again.

Karma is a funny thing, George.

StupidiNews!

• In a case that sparked national outrage in India and international condemnation, four men have been found guilty of gang raping a 23-year old woman on a bus in New Delhi last year.
• A state judge in Indiana has declared the state's right-to-work law unconstitutional, finding that forcing unions to represent those who refused to pay union dues to be illegal.
• Vice-President Joe Biden continues to push Congress for funding to expand US ports to handle larger ships that will begin coming through the Panama Canal in 2015.
• Yet another Rafael Nadal victory over Novak Djokovic in a Grand Slam final as Nadal takes his second US Open championship and 13th Grand Slam title.
• Apple is expected to announce a new iPhone, as well as converting the current iPhone 5 into a cheaper model for international sales at today's event in Cupertino.

Last Call For 11-Dimensional Chess, Syrian Edition

So, the story today goes like this:  Secretary of State John Kerry made some interesting remarks about Syria to the British press early this morning...

“Sure. [Assad] could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week,” he said. “Turn it over, all of it, without delay. And allow the full and total accounting for that, but he isn't about to do it.”

The press screamed GAFFE...

White House officials spent several hours downplaying Kerry's comment, calling it a "hypothetical," a "rhetorical" comment — an anonymous American official even told CNN it was a "major goof." And it sure looked like a comment tossed off without much thought — in the GIF at right, you can see Kerry throw up his hands at the idea. "But he isn't about to do it," Kerry said of Assad handing over all his chemical weapons, "and it can't be done, obviously."

...but then something very remarkable happened. The Russians LOVED it, and more importantly, so did the Assad regime.

But Russia treated it like a serious proposal. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said his country would work "immediately" to convince Syria to hand over his large chemical weapons arsenal. Then Syria foreign minister Walid al Moualem said he "welcomes Russia's proposal." Suddenly the goof was serious. Then deputy national security adviser Tony Blinkin said "We're going to take a hard look at this," in a press conference with reporters. "We'll talk to the Russians about it."

Hillary Clinton was on hand to seize the upper hand...

Then Clinton played it off in a speech that was originally supposed to be about wildlife trafficking. "Now, if the regime immediately surrendered its stockpiles to international control as was suggested by Secretary Kerry and the Russians, that would be an important step," Clinton said. "But this cannot be another excuse for delay or obstruction. And Russia has to support the international community's efforts sincerely, or be held to account." That's not a rejection of Kerry's comment as a goof — that's a demand that Russia take it extremely seriously! Syria would have never been open to this proposal if it weren't for the threat of military strikes, Clinton said.

And now, all of a sudden, there might be a way out of this mess, without President Obama actually having to fire a single missile. And considering the now overwhelming opposition to Syrian strikes, it's something the White House is going to actively pursue, I should think.


Who knew?

Assad Uses The Shaggy Defense

As he tells PBS' Charlie Rose "It wasn't me."

The Syrian president, Bashar Assad, has said there is no evidence he is responsible for the deadly gas attacks the US government claims left 1,429 people dead, including 426 children.

In an exclusive interview secured by Charlie Rose of PBS, Assad said: “There has been no evidence that I used chemical weapons against my own people.”

Assad refused to confirm or deny that he had chemical weapons but said if he did, they were under “centralized control”.

The interview will air in its entirety on PBS on Monday night, as president Barack Obama is due to sit down with six television networks for recorded interviews and press his case for a targeted attack on Syria.

I'm sure his military didn't kill 100,000+ with conventional weapons of war, either.  Must have been some other dude named Assad.   Who happens to control Syria.  Let's just call the whole thing off, guys.  He says he didn't do it.

What?  Seems rather loony?  But Alan Grayson, Ron Paul, Vladimir Putin, and El Rushbo say we should believe the guy.  Must have been some other dude. 

And for pretty much everyone on that list of people there, the "other dude" is President Obama himself.  Assad's more trustworthy to them.

How does that work?  Stop asking so many questions.  Obama is evil, that's all you need to know.

Stand With Rand, Standing With Assad

Rand Paul has his list of demands to make sure the Assad regime is heard, or he'll filibuster any Senate legislation on Syria forever.  Or something.

Sen. Rand Paul, who's already said he opposes the limited U.S. military strikes in Syria being pushed by President Barack Obama, said Sunday he was still weighing his options for stalling a vote in the full Senate on the use of force resolution.

The Kentucky Republican said a filibuster - which he used earlier this year to demand more information from the Obama administration on the use of drones - could only delay a vote, but wouldn't "put off a vote forever."


Instead, he said, he'd demand that any vote taken by Congress be binding, meaning that the president would be barred from striking Syria without congressional approval.

"The president cannot, if we vote him down, decide to go to war anyway. That's the way I interpret the Constitution," Paul said on "Fox News Sunday."

So, no big deal, he just wants an end to the War Powers Act built into any Syria legislation.  Good luck with that.  But if he doesn't get it, well, he'll filibuster it for a day or two and more dudebro liberals will tell me how great Rand Paul would be as President.  It won't solve any of the problems in Syria or in America, but it'll be awesome, somehow.